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Day Four

 Franglais Fun – Day Four During our final evening on a beautiful Berck seafront – it was the summer solstice, and the sunset was stunning – one of our children was crying. We asked her what was wrong, and she said “nothing; they’re tears of happiness.” You can’t put a price on experiences like this, and for every one of your children, however tired and grumpy they might be this weekend, the memories of the last four days will stay with them forever. All good things come to an end, however, and we awoke on Thursday morning knowing this was our last day. Well, most of us awoke but one young lad – our resident wordsmith in fact – was still in the land of nod well after everyone else had eaten, and it took two members of staff standing by his bed shouting ‘wakey wakey’ and clapping their hands loudly to raise him. After another breakfast of multiple croissants and bread (where DO they put it all?) the children were sent back to their rooms to pack, and be ready for Room Inspection....
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Day Three - "That was the best ever second to last day"

 Franglais Fun - Day Three Tonight we have had one of the most wonderful moments in any of our French Trips from the last twelve years – we will save this for the end of tonight’s blog. Thank you for all your comments on the blog – we love reading these – and the interesting if unusual suggestions for instruments beginning with N. We had a more leisurely start this morning, as we didn’t need to be out of the hotel until 9.30am so the children were encouraged to go and tidy up their bedrooms, and sort their bags out ready for the day ahead. We can’t be sure that this included disposing of lunch remnants from the journey out here on Monday, but we will do our best to return your children to you tomorrow night without four- day-old old sandwiches and yogurts in their rucksacks. Everyone was very excited this morning, as it was Bagatelle Theme Park day. The weather was cloudy but dry, which was quite a relief after the deluge at Etaples yesterday so we set off more confidently without...
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Day Two

 Franglais Fun – Day Two Not only do your children have impressive appetites but my goodness, they sleep well too – everyone was settled in bed and quiet by a very respectable hour last night. This enabled the staff to reflect on the day, and we all agreed what troopers the children had been with the change to arrangements. There had been so much laughter and so many smiles all day, and the staff, too, had many a giggle. Everyone was up at a good time this morning, and we introduced the children to the breakfast routine at Mister Bed. This took a little explaining in a few cases, as there is a definite one-way system in place, to ease things along….but eventually they all got the hang of picking up a tray, bowl, knife, glass and heading to the buffet breakfast. There were some interesting choices for breakfast – it never fails to amaze us how eleven-year-olds can eat three large croissants and a chunk of bread in one go, but they managed. Several children helped themselves to hot...
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Day One and a Half

 France 2023 – Day One With true St Michael’s resilience, our Year 6 pupils and staff endured a lengthy day of sitting on the coach and waiting to board a ferry. Unlike previous years, everyone had to clamber off the coach with their passport, have it scanned at passport control and climb back on again…..and then have them all individually scanned again at check-in. This wouldn’t have been a problem, but for the many coaches of school children in front of us, who all had to do the same thing. On the bright side, we all have nice stamps in our passports. Despite a really smooth road journey to Dover, this delay caused us to miss the ferry we were supposed to be on, by approximately two minutes. A certain member of staff, however, who was travelling by car, had driven past us hours ago waving merrily, and sent messages asking what the adults’ coffee order was. Alas, this was kind but very premature of him, as he was on the original ferry and we now had to wait for a later one. ...
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